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IPA unsure about free speech

The reaction of the Institute of Public Affairs to the Abbott governments backdown on the race-hate proviions Section 18C has been, by its own admission, intemperate (“white hot anger” is the description they used; I think I also saw “ice-cold rage”.

I was, naturally interested in how Freedom Commissioner and former IPA fellow Tim Wilson would respond to proposals to suppress free speech coming from his former organization. However, my Twitter interactions with him were thoroughly unsatisfactory. His initial response to my suggestion that he had been silent was rather snarky

um, go and read the transcript of the last senate estimates I appeared at

Indeed Mark Dreyfus (Shadow Attorney General) gave a great speech. But I was still interested in what Wilson had to say on the topic. Alas, my tweet on this went unanswered. Judging by a previous response, Wilson intends to duck the issue.

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26 thoughts on “IPA unsure about free speech”

Ivor :@Nevil Kingston-Brown
Does this mean that the massive appreciation of natural resources does not belong to the people who created the growth that generated the massive appreciation?
If you inherit or marry capitalist wealth, how is this not capitalist wealth?

Generally I take a pretty Georgist attitude to questions of land value appreciation (and, by extension, mineral rights appreciation), which is that the increase in value of the property belongs to the community. In the case of mining it’s necessary to separate the “unearned” component of deposits increasing in value without effort from the “earned” component which comes from exploration, negotiating rights, digging it up, getting it to market, etc. That is why I said that Twiggy & Gina are capitalists, but the scale of their wealth, the thing that separates them from your average large business owner, comes from the increase in the value of their mineral resources. Since the start of the mining boom, those resources would be vastly more valuable, and whoever controlled them would be rich, regardless of whether they lifted a single shovel.

In our context, by your argument, the growth that generated the massive appreciation in iron ore, coal, etc was the expansion of the Chinese economy, and the people who created it are the Chinese. So are you advocating we turn our natural resources over to China?

The wealth might have its origins in capitalism. That doesn’t make the person inheriting or otherwise gaining the wealth a capitalist, unless they continue to invest it in a capitalist business. Otherwise every trust fund wastrel or white collar embezzler would be a capitalist.